


Notes from Volunteer Work

by telemain



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, Epistolary, Far Future, Gen, Maybe AU Maybe Not, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemain/pseuds/telemain
Summary: Sometime in the not-too-near future, a teenage girl has to volunteer for community service, where she meets a couple Scoobies approaching life's finish line.
Relationships: Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

Dear Daddy, 

This is _so unfair_. I just found out in order to graduate, I have to do forty hours of community service! _Forty! Hours!_ It's bad enough this school is guarded like a prison, now we _prisoners_ have to do community service on top of it all. 

Mom knows someone who works at the old folks home who says I can do it there. Maybe they'll have me run the bingo game. Two hours a week every Wednesday night and I'll be done by March... 

Love, 

Katie

* * *

Dear Daddy,

You will not _believe_ who I met today! It was my first day at the old folks home except they don't use that term, it's the 'silver years assisted-care living facility'. (Old folks home is shorter.) But they walked me through the rec room - looks just like our cafeteria, except with TVs and board games and computers - and I saw this woman with the reddest hair I have ever seen. I mean like, fire engine, red crayon, _red_! She was sitting with one of the residents, one of the men, and I asked if that was another volunteer. "No" the lady said casually, "that's Willow." 

"Willo- not _the_ Willow?!" 

Yes, it was. Is. Was. Whatever. _The. Willow._ Founder of Willowtree Technologies, inventor of, among other things, the Harris Bionic Eye. I happen to mention that specifically because I recognized the man she was talking to from doing a report on her company for Computer Science II last year. True, he's 20 years older than the picture I found on wikipedianet, but he's definitely Alexander Harris, first user of the bionic eye technology that ended up being named after him. I wonder if he still has the original prototype somewhere, the one that needed the user to wear camera glasses and recharge the whole mess every night? 

How did one of the most famous biotech engineers - not to mention one of the richest women - in the world end up at a suburban old folks home??

Forget that question. _I actually got to meet Willow!_ I fangirled a little, I couldn't help it. 

She promised to sign my copy of her book! 

Love

Katie


	2. Chapter 2

Dear Daddy,

I did something bad. I snuck on one of the staff computers and pulled up Willow's record. She's only ever professionally gone by one name - just "Willow" - and I was curious. 

Except her name in the records, is Willow Nolastname. But I saw something else. Spouse: Alexander Harris. Well. That explains a lot. 

Love 

Katie 

PS - Mom just found out I'm writing to you again and she thinks I should stop. She says it's not healthy. I don't care, I want to. I hope you want me to, too. K

* * *

Dear Daddy, 

Boys are dumb and I throw rocks at them. Turns out Steve had been dared by his friends to see how far he could get with "the geek". "The geek"! _Of all the nerve!_ Just because I happen to think computers do cool things, I'm also a girl, dammit! 

Thank God we only went on one date and I didn't let him get anywhere. I feel stupid. 

I guess when I got down to the home people could tell. Who am I kidding, of course they could tell, I was bouncing between fury and tears. 

So Alex and Willow calmed me down - right? I'm supposed to be there to help them - and gave me some good advice. It boils down to "love makes you do the wacky." 

"So in other words," Alex said, "don't feel too stupid when you do something stupid for love - or even just for a crush. Everyone's been there." 

Willow muttered something that sounded like "Hyenas". I can't possibly have heard that right, but Alex threw her a glare anyway, whatever it was. 

Maybe boys are dumb, but some men are pretty cool. 

Love, 

Katie


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Daddy,

Oh, do I feel mortified. I was chatting with Willow today - it was just her, Alex was at the doctors' - and I said something about how I never saw anyone come to visit them. She told me that they were really all each other had left.

I then managed to stick my foot in my mouth all the way to the kneecap. "Well, if you only have one person left, it's good that it's the love of your life?" 

Willow looked startled, then sad, then tired. Then she got what I can only describe as a Resolve Face. "Katie, hon, Xander isn't the love of my life. He's been my best friend since kindergarten, and we love each other like siblings, but - " 

"I'm so sorry." I stumbled over the words, accidentally interrupting her. "I just thought since you're married-" 

She blinked. "How in the worlds did you know that?" 

_Shit_. Dance, Kathrynn, dance. "I guess I didn't, I just assumed. You just kind of get along like an old married couple." 

"Are you saying we bicker a lot?" She smiled. "Actually - and don't tell anyone - we are married. But not really." 

"How does someone get to be 'not really' married?" 

Willow took a deep breath and looked out the rec room window, to the sky where a flock of birds was flying by, up into forever, and didn't say anything for a minute. 

"I'm sorry, it was a really personal question, I-" 

"No, no, don't worry." In the sunlight reflecting off her face, she looked young. "We're all each other has anymore, and the easiest way to ensure that legally we get to take care of each other is to be married. All we had to do was swear to love, cherish and honor each other, which we've been doing since we were five years old anyway." 

I tripped over my own tongue, I didn't want to ask anything like- "But what about _real_ marriage? To someone you're in love with?" but I did want to know. 

"I won't go over the whole history, and I wouldn't care to speak for Xander anyway, but for me - " Her eyes closed, and she clasped her hands together and held them over her heart. "I loved once, very deeply, and after that I never let anyone as close again. I never needed to." 

I think that's both the sweetest and the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. 

Love 

Katie

PS - I also accidentally referred to him as Xander, which he doesn't like. Also mortification. Xander and Will are what they call each other; for the rest of us, it's Alex and Willow.


	4. Chapter 4

Dear Daddy, 

Alex Harris died last week. Willow sent me an email to let me know. I've never been to a funeral as an "adult" (okay still 17 but-) . What do I do?

~~Love~~

~~Katie~~

Dear Daddy, 

I didn't send this before. It's now been three weeks and apparently what I do at a funeral as an adult is wear black and try not to ugly cry, so pretty much the same as five years ago. 

There was barely anyone there. A few staff and residents from the home. The priest. Willow. Me. I wonder if I would have been invited if he'd had a crowd of friends and children and grandkids and cousins and so forth to be there. I think maybe I still would have been. 

Willow spoke for a few minutes, how he'd been her best friend and her rock all her life. How between him and her other best friend Buffy, Buffy had been the physical one, Willow the brains, but Xander the heart. And how when Buffy's mom died, Xander had decided he blamed the wall. 

"For the record," Willow said with a small smile. "I don't recommend doing that. Bad for both the wall and your knuckles." 

She muttered a few quiet words over the coffin, then leaned in to kiss his forehead. When we all filed past to pay our final respects, I saw she'd also placed in his hands - I swear to this - a yellow crayon snapped in half. Must be an inside joke.

God, how alone Willow must feel. 

Love

Katie

PS - Daddy? Could you look around up there in heaven, and see if you see him? They buried him in a pinstriped black suit like an old-timey gangster, with an eyepatch on like an old-timey pirate. Could you tell him Katie says hi and she'll miss him? And I'll try to be there for Willow?


	5. Chapter 5

Dear Daddy,

I've been bawling my eyes out all evening. I went down to see Willow and found her sitting in her usual spot in the rec room. She's stopped recoloring her hair, ever since Alex died, so it's now kinda of a red-tinged gray. Her eyes were closed, and she had a small smile on, so I waited and gave her some time. When she opened her eyes, they were a little red, but she wasn't the wreck I'd expected. "Hi Katie," she said with a smile. "I was just borrowing Xander back for a few minutes." 

I felt my heart flip over in my chest. "Does that work? For dealing with being lonely?" 

"I'm not lonely," Willow said with a small smile. "I have all my friends with me. Come in, see." 

I followed her to her room. Strange now I think of it, how I've known her for a year and never been in her room before. Of course, until last month, it was Alex's room too. 

One whole wall of her room, floor-to-ceiling, corner-to-corner, is _covered_ in pictures. "They're in order," she said, walking along to the far end, "here is the first picture of me and Xander, way back when." She pointed up into the corner. Two small children smiled from the picture. "We were in kindergarten." She walked slowly down the length of the wall back towards the door, pointing at one picture after another. 

"My eighth birthday party, me and Xander and our other friend Jesse." The three of them have apparently decided frosting works well as a facemask. 

"Here I was... eleven, I think? Xander came for a sleepover, and we passed out on the couch." Her head is on his shoulder, and there's a small smile on his face. "You can't tell, but my little crushy heart is going all pitter-pat." 

She pointed to another one. "That's Buffy, a couple months after she came to town." 

My jaw dropped. "That's your friend Buffy? The one Alex said I reminded him of?" She's a bombshell, a knockout. Honestly, if I saw her at school, I'd think she was a brainless blonde bimbo.

Willow smiled, and like so often I wondered if she can tell what I'm thinking. "She was very strong, and not like ooh, piles of muscles, but emotionally strong. Very loyal to her friends. You could count on her for anything. I sense that same sort of love in you." And before the moment can get awkward, she moves on. 

"Oh! Here we are with Giles!" She indicates a picture. "He was ... well, he was our school librarian, but he sort of ended up being a father figure to all of us. Especially Buffy. Xander and I had... lame fathers, but at least we had them. Buffy's was just gone." I looked at the picture and had to bite the corners of my lips to keep the giggles in. "What?"

"Willow. _**White plaid pants**_?!" 

She saved me the trouble by cracking up herself. "I was... not a high school fashion plate. More, y'know, the softer side of Sears." 

"What's a Sears?" I had to ask. 

"Oh goddesses I feel old." But she said it with a laugh. She stopped at a group picture. "Huh, forgot she was in this." She tapped a face. "Cordelia Chase. Our high school queen bee. I hated her, and I thought Xander did too." She took a breath. "Until he started dating her."

Ouch. 

"I'm so sorry. I would have been..." 

"Destroyed? Devastated? Distraught? I was all those things and more. In the way that only a teenage girl can be." Willow's smile tilted, grew a little sad. "I'm glad that from this end of my life, I can look back with a little more emotional distance and just remember all the good things." 

"Speaking of...here's me and Oz. He was a guitar player, much with the quiet. My first real boyfriend." Picture-Oz is gazing at Picture-Willow with adoration. Willow is smiling, one hand over the one of his that's on her shoulder. 

"And us all with Anya." Buffy, Willow and another blonde, this one wrapped around Xander. She looks happy, he looks dazed. "Xander almost married her a few years later, but he wasn't ready for marriage. She pushed for the relationship, pushed towards marriage, and what happened was a freakout." She looks over at me. "By the way, bit of advice. Don't do that to a guy." 

We're almost at the end now, close to the door. Willow has not been in a lot of the group pictures of them as teenagers; when she is, it's with averted eyes, a forced smirk or half smile, tense body language. 

Right by the door, right where she'll see it last as she leaves the room, is a picture of her with an entirely genuine and carefree smile, and probably because of the beautiful woman next to her, not as in-your-face pretty as Buffy, but beautiful as hell. Buffy could have been a model and had glossy photos taken of her; this woman would have inspired sculptors. "This is Tara. Remember I once told you Xander wasn't the love of my life? She is. I love her so much, and she loves me." 

The smile on Willow's face as she gazes at the picture is love itself, pure and free, but edged with wistfulness, with just a little anguish in the corners. "I just haven't seen her in decades." 

"What happened?" 

"I was so terrified of losing her that I did. Then I got her back. And a day later - " her voice gone very quiet and cold. "- some asshole was shooting off his gun in celebration of something. Hit Tara in the back as she was standing next to me in our room. All I could do was hold her as she bled out, tell her I love her." I wanted to hug her. Then I did it. She clung for a second, then pulled away. "She's why I called my company Willowtree Tech. Willowtree was her pet name for me... and together the initials are WT. Our initials." 

I wanted to cry. I forced it down. 

"We knew each other for less than three years. And that was more than fifty years ago and yet - " She looked at me, her eyes shining. "There have certainly been women since. And men. I respected them all too much to pretend I loved them. But I was honest with them, and we had fun together, until they each left my life. I like to think I kept an open mind, an open heart, and kept the door open for love. But I truly believe Tara is my soulmate. We recognized something in each other that went beyond physical or emotional attraction. We... completed each other."

That was when the tears began and I didn't fight them. 

"Katie, I want you to know that I believe - no, that's not the right word. I _know_ that Heaven is real. And I know that Tara is there, and I will see her again. Xander's there too now, and Buffy, and her sister Dawn, and Giles, and Oz, and everyone else I've ever truly loved." Her fingers stroked the picture, over Tara's cheek, and what she said next was not to me. "I'll be there soon, love. Just rest and wait for me. It's been so terribly long, but I'll see you soon enough." 

She brought herself back from the past and gave me a genuine smile. "Someone has to be the last one standing. Their bodies may have failed them, but they're all up there. And in here." She tapped her heart. "So don't worry about me." 

I managed to hold the breakdown until I got home. 

Love 

Katie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, but I'm also not sorry. You saw the tags, you were warned.


	6. Chapter 6

Dear Katie

If you're reading this, I've gone to join my family. Please don't be too sad; I get to be with them all again, and they get to be with me. 

I'm sure that the moment I slipped loose of my body I was calling for Tara... but not calling for too long, since I'm also sure she'll be right there waiting. 

Take care of yourself, my friend. I appreciated your company over this last year-and-some, more than you can know. I look forward to seeing you again someday, but not too soon, okay?

All my love, 

Willow Rosenberg   
but also Willow Harris (for Xander, the brother of my heart)  
and Willow Summers (for Buffy and Dawn, my sisters)   
and Willow Giles (for, well, Giles, a better father than my actual one)   
but most of all Willow Mcclay (for Tara, the other half of my soul)


End file.
